Gorgeous location filming on Italy’s Amalfi Coast and a voice-only performance by the great Claire Bloom as an elderly woman remembering World War II are the main attractions in Kat Coiro’s familiarly snoozy romantic drama.
Kate Bosworth is a blocked writer whose marriage to an uptight British viola player (Iddo Goldberg) is on the skids after a miscarriage. While he’s preoccupied with rehearsals and complaining about Italian food, she flees to a picturesque island where an affair with a hunky, free-spirited American teenager (Jamie Blackley) chases the blues away.
“And While We Were Here,” which was oddly presented in black-and-white at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival but is being released in color, has no shortage of pretentious references to both Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave. But you can’t beat that scenery, or Claire Bloom.